GOP files lawsuit over Illinois congressional map

Wednesday

Jul 27, 2011 at 12:01 AMJul 27, 2011 at 5:02 AM

SPRINGFIELD -- A new congressional district map drawn by the Democratic Illinois legislature “blatantly discriminates against Latino and Republican voters,” according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago Wednesday.

BERNARD SCHOENBURG

SPRINGFIELD -- A new congressional district map drawn by the Democratic Illinois legislature “blatantly discriminates against Latino and Republican voters,” according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago Wednesday.

The court case was brought by a group called Committee for a Fair and Balanced Map, which is described in the lawsuit as an independent not-for-profit organization. However, its members include at least three former Republican members of the U.S. House, including former House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois. Other plaintiffs include 10 of the 11 GOP members of the U.S. House from Illinois.

The lawsuit says Democratic mapmakers packed “excessive numbers of Latino voters” into an “earmuff” shaped district in Chicago, the new 4th, to the extent that “the votes of Latinos inside and outside that district are unlawfully diluted.”

“It sacrifices the interests of Latino voters in favor of preserving and strengthening white majorities” in proposed districts 3 and 5, the suit states.

The lawsuit also states that the map as a whole and several individual districts “represent a flexing of Democratic political muscle in Springfield aimed at creating a Democratic majority in the Illinois congressional delegation, regardless of the actual preferences of the electorate demonstrated only nine months ago.

While Illinois voters in 2010 sent 11 Republicans and eight Democrats to the U.S. House, the lawsuit states that the new map “effectively reverses the results.” The suit predicts the new map would yield a dozen Democrats and only six Republican winners in 2012.

Because of national population shifts, Illinois lost one seat in the U.S. House. The state will have 18 for the 2012 election instead of the current 19.

Steve Brown, spokesman for Mike Madigan, the Chicago Democrat who doubles as speaker of the Illinois House and chairman of the Democratic Party of Illinois, responded that “the state law governing congressional reapportionment law meets all the requirements of the Voting Rights Act and other state and federal laws.”

U.S. Rep. Tim Johnson, R-Urbana, who represents the current 15th Congressional District and has said he will run in the new 13th, which includes much of Springfield, is the only Republican member of the Illinois delegation to the U.S. House who is not listed as a plaintiff.

While Johnson believes the redistricting process “was unfair and a distortion of the people’s wishes,” said Johnson spokesman Phil Bloomer, “these challenges have not ever succeeded, so he has decided to devote his energy and resources to his reelection campaign.”